allow* parameters not working on display-dependency-updates

[meeque]

I'm trying to use the versions:display-dependency-updates goal from the CLI, but forbid major updates. I tried both of the following:

mvn versions:display-dependency-updates -DallowAnyUpdates=false -DallowMajorUpdates=false
mvn versions:display-dependency-updates -DallowAnyUpdates=false -DallowMajorUpdates=false -DallowMinorUpdates=true -DallowIncrementalUpdates=true -DallowSnapshots=false

In any case, I'm still seeing outputs like the following:

[INFO]   org.springframework:spring-core .......... 4.3.16.RELEASE -> 5.0.0.RC4

As you can see, the major version changed from 4 to 5, which I would not expect. Instead, was hoping for the following (based on today's versions on Maven Central):

[INFO]   org.springframework:spring-core ..... 4.3.16.RELEASE -> 4.3.18.RELEASE

Sorry, if I'm missing something fundamental, or have a typo in the above. I tried hard to get it right, and rule everything out.

Btw, the above behavior is not limited to that specific dependency. Other dependencies are affected, too. Could this be caused by the weird version suffixes that projects such as Spring and Netty are using?

Fyi, some version information:

[INFO] --- versions-maven-plugin:2.5:display-dependency-updates (default-cli) @ Xyz ---

Apache Maven 3.5.4 (1edded0938998edf8bf061f1ceb3cfdeccf443fe; 2018-06-17T20:33:14+02:00)
Maven home: /usr/local/Cellar/maven/3.5.4/libexec
Java version: 1.8.0_181, vendor: Oracle Corporation, runtime: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_181.jdk/Contents/Home/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "mac os x", version: "10.13.6", arch: "x86_64", family: "mac"

[meeque]

Some notes:

• The allow* parameters seem to have been introduced to the display-dependency-updates goal in allowMajorUpdates Parameters for display-dependency-updates Maven Goal #94
• Other goals seem to have had trouble with their allow* parameters in the past, e.g. in Impossible to restrict Major version number update - allowMajorUpdates=false is not respected #11
• I notice that display-dependency-updates uses its own implementation to "calculateUpdateScope":
  https://github.com/mojohaus/versions-maven-plugin/blob/master/src/main/java/org/codehaus/mojo/versions/DisplayDependencyUpdatesMojo.java#L368
  ... while other goals use this implementation to "determineUnchangedSegment":
  https://github.com/mojohaus/versions-maven-plugin/blob/master/src/main/java/org/codehaus/mojo/versions/AbstractVersionsUpdaterMojo.java#L460
  Both are subtly different, and both look correct at the first glance. But shouldn't that be consolidated some more? E.g. extracted to a utility class?

[dougbreaux]

2.5 years on, relatively new to Maven and really wanting & expecting this to work. And the documentation certainly says that it should.

[meeque]

Thanks for resurfacing this one, @dougbreaux. Frankly, I have accepted that this just does not work as expected a long time ago. In fact, I had forgotten about this completely.

It would still be great to hear feedback from a contributor. Is this considered a bug? Or is it expected behavior? How do we need to adjust our expectations?

If it's a bug, would a PR be welcome? I might have another look at this. But I'm not experienced with developing Maven Plugins. I cannot promise to get it right and would certainly need review and feedback.

[mklinger]

After having the same problem here, I took a look at the source code (thanks for pointing to the relevant places, @meeque). The parameter semantics are not really intuitive. In the current version (2.8.1) they work as follows:

• With allowAnyUpdates=true (default): The latest version will be displayed, no matter what part of the version number changed. All other allow* parameters are ignored.
• With allowAnyUpdates=false and allowMajorUpdates=true (default), the latest version with a higher major part will be displayed. Parameters allowMinorUpdates and allowIncrementalUpdates are ignored.
• With allowAnyUpdates=false and allowMajorUpdates=false and allowMinorUpdates=true (default), the latest version with a higher minor part will be displayed. Versions with higher major parts are ignored. Parameter allowIncrementalUpdates is ignored.
• With allowAnyUpdates=false and allowMajorUpdates=false and allowMinorUpdates=false and allowIncrementalUpdates=true (default), the latest version with a higher incremental part will be displayed. Versions with higher major parts or higher minor parts are ignored.

IMHO, this doesn't make much sense for semantic versioning. I hacked a version that removes the allowAnyUpdates parameter and allows to set the other parameters independently of each other. With this version, setting allowMajorUpdates=false will display all available updates that do not have a change in the major part.

The fork is available here, in the hope it may be useful: https://github.com/mklinger/versions-maven-plugin

[montss]

This issue is still there as of today on version 2.9

[dmgping]

Having problems due to this issue also.

[jarmoniuk]

What kind of problems are you experiencing exactly, @dmgping?

allowAnyUpdates has been deprecated and is to be removed in version 3.0.0 of the plugin. Furthermore, the documentation and behaviour has been enriched to specify that e.g. allowMajorUpdates false also implies allowAnyUpdates false.

So, could you please state what dependency updates are not being updated properly and what the pom.xml and the version of the plugin you're using are.

[dmgping]

The problem I am having is exactly as @meeque described in the original issue description, the allowMajorUpdates flag is ignored when passed to the versions:display-dependency-updates goal.

The -DallowMajorUpdates=false flag works when used with the versions:use-latest-versions goal, but I was trying to parse the output from versions:display-dependency-updates to trigger an external upgrade testing script, which should not run for major versions.

Maven version: 3.8.1
versions-maven-plugin version: 2.14.2

[jarmoniuk]

I see the semantics of allowAnyUpdates is counter-intuitive.

Please set if to false if you want to also set any of the allow...updates flags.

I've created a PR #941 to ignore "allowAnyUpdates".

[jarmoniuk]

Also, please always check against the latest release before reporting a problem.

[dmgping]

Thank you @ajarmoniuk for the clarification, I see the expected results when also providing the -DallowAnyUpdates=false option.
#941 will surely prevent this confusion in future cases.